


For Other Days

by Ori_Cat



Series: For the world's more full of weeping [2]
Category: Chronicles of Ancient Darkness - Michelle Paver
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Mild Suicidal Ideation, Reposted following reviewal, You know who I mean, the continuing quest to name everyone, this time in Greenlandic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-13
Packaged: 2019-03-31 01:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13964685
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ori_Cat/pseuds/Ori_Cat
Summary: You’d think it would be easy,notjoining a cult.





	For Other Days

It took a long time for him to turn away, as though his feet had been lashed down to the ground, as though the wind had frozen him there. But when enough time had worn past the bonds finally broke, and he turned and ran, scattering the trail of his footprints, stumbling and rising and stumbling again, anything to get away from the poisoned land and the shadow of death that lay behind him. 

(He couldn’t tell if it had been men or spirits he had met; maybe it was just the panic, maybe the place, but there had been something monstrous about them each, half a glimpse out of the corner of his eye. It wasn’t something he wanted to think on too much.) 

It couldn’t last, of course. Eventually he stumbled, panting, to a stop, breath clouding before his face, and fell into a crouch, dropping his head into his hands. What was he to do now? He had nowhere to go. He had no-one to help, and - he realized - no-one to know where he was, save the two almost-men. He was entirely alone. 

(And it was all his own fault.) 

Further away. That, at least, he knew. At least he had to get back to the safety of the fast ice, and then he could decide. 

(He could go back home. The almost-men had said - well, he _knew._ He did. But he didn’t care, he’d knew he didn’t care, none of that mattered anymore, because- 

Because they’d promised they would provide, that they would be his people, but now he was gone and they would never know. 

Everyone was going to hate him. If he returned home- but it wasn’t home, if it was home he would feel good about going back, wouldn’t he? If it was truly home, nobody would hate him.) 

The cold was starting to seep into his feet and legs, so he got back up and started walking, hoping to keep himself warm. Maybe it would help him think, too. 

* * *

When the sun had fallen to a handsbreadth above the horizon, he stopped. That was the rule. You always left yourself some daylight to make camp with. Unfortunately, he had the light but no place - there was no bluff close enough to dig into that could be reached before dark. The world was plane-flat about him. But it was safer, always, to stay where you were, wherever you were, than to try to carry on in the dark. 

If you had a bluff, you made a snow cave. If you had deep snow and a hide, you made a trench. If you had neither, you made a quinzee, which was more work and more likely to collapse on your head but he didn’t have any other choice. The snow was only knee-deep and would lay him down on ice if he dug through. At least it was good, would lock together for him. 

He would need warmth, too. He pulled out his lamp and slipped it inside his parka, to ensure it would be warm enough to light later. Then he dropped his pack and began gathering armfuls of snow. 

The sky was darkening by the time he was finished, and he dug out the insides of the walls and crawled inside, shoving his pack outside the opening behind him. There was just enough room for him to sit, head hunched to avoid banging it on the roof. Carefully, he balanced his lamp between his knees, filled it with oil, and struck orange sparks across it until the wick caught. He scraped out a little shelf in the wall of the quinzee, gently flattening the base with the back of his knuckles, and set the lamp in it. 

“Don’t go out,” he muttered. “Don’t go out.” He wasn’t sure who he was talking to. The lamp was very unlikely to hear him. 

All alone in the tiny circle of the shelter and the larger circle of the fast ice, he pulled his knees up to his chest and burrowed his head as deep into his hood as it would go. A thin trickle of ice-cold air poured past his nose. Good, he thought vaguely, exhaustedly. At least he could be confident in not suffocating before morning. 

And the night crept in on silent paws and closed its jaws over him. 

* * *

He woke to a sea of white light filtering through the walls, and an ache in his back from sleeping curled in a ball. His little cousins could and still did sleep like that, but he had never been able to. 

What had he told himself to remember- his light! Had it burned entirely away? 

It hadn’t, mercifully, and he lifted the lamp close to his face, soaking up the last vestiges of warmth before he pinched it out and repacked it. 

No more oil left, though, now. If he did not make it back ho- back to some sort of safety by nightfall, he would have no more warmth for the next night. Pulling stray tendrils of hair and fur away from his face, he shifted over and crawled back out, knocking snow down his neck in the low opening, and got up stiffly. 

“Ah, no,” he said, into the perfect stillness. It sounded impressively calm for the stab of apprehension that had lodged itself into his gut. The earth was grey, and the sky was grey, and the horizon was grey, and nothing could be distinguished. The sea had spat out all-encompassing, stifling mist and the world had shrunk to a circle barely ten paces across. He was lost within it, smothered, hidden from the eyes of the sky and anything he could use to navigate. He would have to go on blind, he thought, as he peered into the mist. Have to carry on with no landmarks. He had dug the opening facing south, he knew that. Yes, south. So - he went and stood before the opening, quinzee at his back - he could find a way. 

Or else he could stay, and hope the mist lifted soon (unlikely; there was no wind to drive it off), that someone would find him (who was even looking?) before his one day of food ran out and the cold worked itself on him. Which would undoubtably be terrible, no matter how tempting a solution it might seem in the moment. He would regret it, if he did that, he thought vaguely. 

So he set his face towards the south, and left behind the mountain, and the quinzee, and all his mistakenly-set hopes, and walked. He didn’t know what else he could do. 

* * *

It was impossible to tell how long he had been walking, at least with any certainty. Everything was disintegrated into a shining, slate-coloured blur. 

Was he only imagining it, or did a patch of the mist look lighter than the rest? His heart leapt. If he could at least see the sun, he could know his direction, he could know he was heading properly south. It was too much to hope that he might have encountered other people - nobody with any sense, nobody who didn’t have to be would be out in such weather. 

(But then again, he didn’t have to be either, did he? He could have said no, could have stayed back with the clan, could have _not been so stupid- _)__

__That was not helping. He just had to get somewhere safe. Somewhere he knew. Then he could start on hating himself._ _

__He scratched a circle into the snow with the tip of his boot, so he would know where he had turned off if it turned out to be nothing, only a trick of the light, and notched it, so he would know which way he had been going. Then he turned toward the light, which - drew closer? So it could not be the sun, he knew he was not close enough to the horizon for that, but then there was no sound of man, and what else made light?_ _

__As he walked, the light went from far to near, and all of a sudden he stood before the source. It looked like a pillar of flame, of near his height, pale yellows and oranges. It poured out little to no heat - he was standing near enough and felt nothing, and the snow below it was smooth and unmelted as though it did not exist, and the core appeared as a pure pillar of light. He stopped in abject confusion._ _

__He should probably turn around now and leave, pretend like he hadn’t seen anything. This was - this was magic and spirits and nothing he understood, nothing he’d been told about. He wasn’t - he knew very little, comparatively, about anything to do with the spirit world. He’d always thought he would have others to ask._ _

__It turned - it had no distinct sides or features at all, and yet he could somehow tell - back towards him, and then shifted away a little, as though beckoning. It had thought. It had thought and it knew he was there._ _

__Unthinking, he reached out to touch it, and snatched his hand back. He intended to ask what it was, or maybe what was going on, anything to answer the growing curiosity churning itself into fear, but what came out, almost as a whisper, was “Will you help me?”_ _

__The colour changed, reddened, guttered, and drew together again. Which was no answer, or at least no answer he could understand._ _

__On the other hand, had he anything to lose? Only a life that was of little enough value anyway. If it led him into the depths of the sea, what would he have lost, that he was not already likely to lose alone in the cold and the dark._ _

__(And if it was malign, wouldn’t he be afraid? Wouldn’t he be able to feel, if it was threatening? And he didn’t, instead he felt - not good, exactly. That had been a while. But warm, somehow. He still didn’t dare hope that all would be well, but-_ _

__Not everything in this world was bad. He didn’t know if he believed that, truly, but he wanted to. It made him want to.)_ _

__It fluttered, beckoned again, though the wind was little. It wanted him to follow it. Wanted to show him something. And though he knew he should not follow - well, if he had always done what he _should_ have done, none of this would be happening. _ _

__“Please,” he begged. “I need - show me what to do. Show me where to go.”_ _

__The light grew deep and orange, prickling his face, and he thought it looked like a laugh. Maybe it had been waiting for that. A ripple ran through it, the base softening and rising, and it began to shift and move, drifting in a direction slightly off from his original path. The pace was slow enough, but steady, and he went after it._ _

__He hoped it was the right choice. Only no-one knew where he was, knew that he was, but it. That was enough, for him to want to trust it. And the snow parted and crumbled before his feet, as he followed in its path._ _

* * *

____

Over and over he ran through all the spirits he knew, all the tricks he had ever heard of that led men astray in the ice. Not the glow that haunted posts and hilltops when a lightning storm was coming. Not one of the Hidden Folk, who looked enough like men to be mistaken. Not the guardian spirits, that took the shape of stones or of snow carven by wind. A flame in the form of a man, wandering upon the ice, that led people - well, he thought it was still south. He hoped it was, that his belief hadn’t been misplaced. 

Softening hoar slipped under his boots, and time spun on, breath by breath, step by step, until his mind was empty of everything but the greyness and the effort of struggling through the snow and the orange firelight that lay upon it like water. As long as there was the light, he would be okay. 

Every time he looked away, blue dots flickered behind his eyes. 

He didn’t notice the stones until he almost tripped over them. The pile was about half a man’s height, slicked in ice, crevices filled with blown snow. The cairns! He almost broke into a laugh, but it would have been too loud, painful in the stillness of the ice. Instead, he wrapped his arms around himself, a hug he couldn’t share with anyone else. 

The cairns were built to be visible one from another, so that if you found one you had a solid line to trace back towards safety - but that was in clearer weather, weather where you could actually see the sun. Now it would be of almost no use, but he still felt better for being near it. People existed, even if he remained alone. 

His fire-guide passed over the cairn, and through, and the ice was not melted. And it went on, waiting for him to follow it around - he stroked the rocks like he could bind himself to them with only fingers, glove catching on the tiny pits the freezing and the thawing had dug into the stones. Like he could grasp the imaginary connecting line and keep clinging to it all the way back. Then, hand trailing behind, he fixed his eyes again on the flame and continued plodding through the snow. 

One cairn passed, and then a second. Oh, he was so tired, he just wanted to curl up in the snow and sleep, right there. Let a little cave form around him like he was a fox. Not have to deal with his life, with the situation he had built for himself. 

Was it just his imagination, or was the fog getting thicker? He could see the dark lump of the next cairn ahead, and the flame before it, but he thought it was already growing greyer as mist poured between them like a wall, and would it still exist once he lost sight - 

“Wait!” he cried, and ran, holding one hand over his face to protect his lungs from the cold, and the flame paused for a second in front of the cairn. And one second was enough - he had meant just to touch it, see if it was solid or stinging or _real,_ but he took one stride too far and stepped into its heart. 

It was a breathless, feverish heat and a half-remembered choking fear, his heart suddenly beating against his ribs like it would break itself. Peculiarly, tears started into his eyes. 

Struggling to swallow them, he jerked back and away at the same time that it flickered out, and after a few seconds it woke again to existence three arms’ distance away, on the other side of the cairn, looking - if an insubstantial formless spirit could - somewhat affronted at his transgression. 

“Don’t go,” he blurted, seized with a sudden fear that it would snuff itself out and leave him with no companion at all in the all-obscuring mist. Then, “What are you?” 

He got no reply, of course, to either, and he laid a hand on the top stone of the cairn, watching it drift inch by inch farther away along the wind. He recognized this cairn - his cousin Nortu and he had had to re-pile it only half a year ago when the stones had tumbled after a windstorm. He was less than a morning’s walk from home. 

It wasn’t too late; he could still turn away now. Didn’t have to face the size of his mistake. But his fire-guide was already five steps away, and too much longer and he wouldn’t be able to see it anymore and - 

He’d asked for help. That meant he had to take it. 

* * *

Once the sun had fallen below the horizon - well, he assumed it had, as the world grew dark - the mist began to disperse, and he caught sight of a few stars glinting like quartz crystals in the charcoal-black sky. But with the clear came the bitter cold, and he pulled up his hood so only his eyes were exposed, and went on like that, hands before his face like a mouse with its food. By the stars, he could tell that, driven to speed by the cold and the inability to make a shelter for himself in the dark even if he decided to stop, alone and unladen, he was making better time than he had expected. Better than he had on the way out, at least. 

Dull with fatigue and the unending grey of the day, he didn’t notice the curled ridge he had stumbled up until the far edge collapsed under his weight, dumping him into a mess of powder up to his thighs. He cursed at the sudden cold. The flame slipped weightless down beside him, and in the orange light he beat as much snow as he could off his legs and struggled back to his feet. 

When he looked up, there was another light, this one blue and steady, fed by oil and filtered through snow. The small cluster of glowing shelters lay just down the slope, black shadows stretching away in all directions, familiar as his own voice to him and yet bizarrely alien in this dark, from this vantage point. In these circumstances. 

All he had to do was go down there. It would be barely fifty steps. The slope ran down. It should be easy. Should be. It should not have felt like his bones were going to break with the effort. 

The flame went ahead of him into the centre of the camp, and he followed, telling himself not to be afraid. It wasn’t exactly convincing. What if everything was already broken beyond repair, what if they would hate him, what if - 

He bit down hard on his lower lip, forced himself to take a breath. He had to stop that. It would do nothing. 

Snow soaked up sound, and the quiet was eerie even though he knew that was the cause. Even the dogs were asleep, in snow-dusted piles with steaming breath outside the shelters. If he wanted to run, not have to face everyone he’d hurt and disappointed, now was the time. Before- before- 

Something flickered at the side of his vision, and he turned just in time to see the flame-spirit wink out. Blue flooded back into the space where it had been, and something caught in his chest - it had been good. It had been trustworthy, it had led him to safety and he hadn’t wanted to see it go. 

A dog’s bark split the silence, loud enough to startle him, and then all the dogs were awake and were joining in, and he only managed to take one abortive step sideways before a man ducked out of one of the openings, straightened, and caught sight of him. 

“Atoq?” 

Too late now. He opened his mouth to try to say something, give some kind of excuse, but the dogs hadn’t stopped barking and suddenly everything was happening at once, the man grabbing his arm so hard it hurt and calling and the fist around his heart wouldn’t let go, though orange lamplight and more faces appeared - 

And he was shoved into someone’s arms, and he didn’t even get to see her face but it felt so familiar he knew immediately. “I’m sorry,” he heard himself say, face pressed into the fur of his mother’s hood. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t-“ 

“You don’t need to apologize,” she whispered, grip tightening further around his shoulders. “You’re here, that’s all I wanted.” 

The tears were getting much harder to swallow now, and it didn’t really seem worth the effort to hold them back anymore. 

* * *

The good thing about the night was that he could excuse his unwillingness to talk as tiredness, as opposed to complete terror of all the conversations he was going to have to have tomorrow (which he was admittedly trying to stamp down, without much success). And so eventually - after he’d been petted like an animal by everybody he knew and embraced until he couldn’t breathe and had wept until his eyelashes froze - he was released, and Nortu took his wrist and half-led, half-dragged him into the shelter. 

It was warm, and he crouched down on the furs and let Nortu unpick the laces on his pack while he pulled the frozen tears from his face. Some of his eyelashes might have come out with them, but that was all right. That was just pain. He knew how to handle that. 

There were a thousand and one questions written all over Nortu’s face, but he was carefully not asking any of them yet, and for that Atoq was grateful. Vision blurring with exhaustion, he slipped off his boots and bent over to haul off his parka and tunic. 

“What-“ Nortu started. 

Atoq stared at him for a second, and then followed his gaze down towards his own ribs. 

Smeared beneath the hollow of his throat - underneath the tunic he had not removed for days - was a patch of black soot, particles sparkling like snow in the light of the lamps. If he turned his head, it almost made the shape of a handprint. 

* * *

That night, he dreamed of fire, but it was no longer heartless; a figure wreathed in flame, that took his face beneath its hands, and raised him up. _It will be well,_ it whispered. _I have gone before you, and I guard you. All shall be well._

And he woke with tears on his face, and he was not afraid.


End file.
